In Small Business, the Real Danger Is Not Making Enough Time

May 30, 2013

I opened my first store in 2003. It was a wine store in Fort Greene in Brooklyn, called The Greene Grape and I realized pretty quickly that I had no idea what I'd gotten myself into. I learned that when you run your own place, you are responsible for absolutely every aspect of it. You are running the books, managing inventory, training employees, looking into marketing promotions, forecasting for the coming months, trying to predict cash flow, cleaning the windows, scrubbing the floors and generally worrying that you're forgetting something important.In short, I found out that small business is hard. The hours are long, the worries constant and the market can seem incredibly fickle. It's no secret that the failure rate for new small businesses in America is alarmingly high; across the country some 25 percent of new restaurants close their doors within the first year and 60 percent are gone within three years. These chances of success don't exactly invite long nights of care-free and dreamless sleep. And yet, it is exactly the ability to break away from the worry and the day-to-day grind that enables a small business person to make good decisions and increase their chances of success.